Big names, big dollars for Clinton fund-raiser

Thursday, Nov. 13, 1997 | 10:14 a.m.

President Clinton won't be golfing with Michael Jordan during his overnight fund-raising visit to Las Vegas Friday.

But he may get a chance to rub elbows with tennis great Andre Agassi and his wife, actress Brooke Shields, before leaving for Sacramento, Calif., Saturday morning.

The celebrity couple tops a list of 60 guests expected to attend a $5,000-per-person fund-raiser with the president at the Henderson home of Las Vegas SUN Editor Brian Greenspun Friday night. The money will go to the Democratic National Committee.

Agassi, a longtime Las Vegan, has been here all week competing in the Las Vegas/USTA Men's Challenger tennis tournament at UNLV. He was introduced on the podium during one of the president's 1996 campaign trips to Las Vegas.

Clinton, who played 18 holes with Jordan at the Las Vegas Country Club during a July visit, will be headlining a women's leadership program at the Desert Inn before the fund-raiser with Agassi and Shields, star of the NBC sitcom "Suddenly Susan."

The DNC's Women's Leadership Forum is hoping the president will borrow Agassi's form and serve an ace while promoting women in politics at the first-ever Las Vegas Network '97 reception.

Gov. Bob Miller, Sens. Harry Reid and Richard Bryan, both D-Nev., Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa and Las Vegas Mayor Jan Laverty Jones are expected to participate in the program.

Jones tentatively has been asked to introduce the president.

Also scheduled to speak is Regent Shelley Berkley, who's running for Congress in the 1st Congressional District.

Cynthia Friedman, national chairwoman of the Women's Leadership Forum, is flying in from Washington to participate, as well.

"We are pleased to be holding our first Las Vegas event," Friedman said in a news release. "We expect a dynamic group of women at this event who support the ideas and values at the core of the Democratic Party."

About 400 people are paying $125 each to attend the event.

Clinton is expected to arrive aboard Air Force One at McCarran International Airport at 6.40 p.m., according to an itinerary put out by the White House.

From there, the president's motorcade travels to the Desert Inn for the Las Vegas Network '97 reception.

The president is set to arrive at Greenspun's house for the DNC fund-raiser about 8:20 p.m., where guests will have a chance to chat with him one-on-one.

The White House itinerary says Clinton has "no public schedule for the remainder of the evening."

Clinton is slated to leave McCarran for Sacramento at 8:25 a.m. Saturday.